Mind/Body Connection: New ways to help trauma survivors heal

Getting Physical: with your feelings

By Molly Belmont/HealthyLife

Anyone who’s experienced a trauma knows that the effects are physical as well as mental. Trauma survivors often store tension in their bodies long after the initial incident, and people who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can experience frightening physical symptoms every time they relive the traumatic event.

Introduced by Peter Levine in his 1997 book Waking the Tiger, Somatic Experiencing offers a natural way to heal trauma that is based on Levine’s study of animals threatened in the wild. Levine realized that while they’re constantly experiencing life-threatening situations, animals don’t sustain trauma the same way human beings do. Instead, they have regulatory processes within the autonomic nervous system that protect them; human beings have the same kind of instinctive regulatory processes, but owing to our more complex brains, these impulses are often inhibited by emotions such as shame, embarrassment, or guilt. As a result, fight-or-flight impulses aren’t always discharged, creating a lasting impact on the patient. Somatic experiencing tracks physical responses during a therapy session to gently release these impulses and re-balance the body’s central nervous system.

Somatic experiencing “looks like traditional therapy,” says Kim Ploussard, a therapist in private practice in Albany who is trained in somatic experiencing. Ploussard says therapists talk with patients just as in a traditional therapy session, but they also ask the patient to focus on their bodily sensations: Are they experiencing shortness of breath? Elevated heart rate? Racing thoughts? Is there pain or numbness, and if so, where is it located?

In time, this continual shift of attention from mind to body and back again, has a restorative effect, allowing the patient to work through the trauma without reliving it, and at the same time, rebalancing the body’s central nervous system.

Ploussard likens the approach to a pendulum. “We ask them to go into the pain, and then notice what is outside of the pain,” she says.

During somatic experiencing, patients are guided through their stories gradually. That’s because patients who are made to tell their whole story all at once can become too activated by it. Prolonged or repeated activation can lead to chronic states of hyperarousal (characterized by anxiety, panic, inability to relax, hypervigilance, digestive problems, chronic pain, sleeplessness, and hostility or rage) or hypoarousal (characterized by depression, chronic fatigue, exhaustion, dissociation, or disorientation). Instead, therapists try to titrate the painful experience, exposing the patient to it in small doses.

“You don’t want them to go so far into it that they can’t get out,” says Ploussard.

In time, patients experience a reduction in anxiety and stress. They don’t experience the same anger or depression. They feel lighter, more content, peaceful, says Ploussard.

Pioneered by Pat Ogden in the 1970s, sensorimotor psychotherapy draws from somatic therapies, as well as neuroscience, attachment theory, and cognitive approaches. This modality is based on the idea that human beings remember trauma less in words and more in their feelings and bodies, making talk therapy a less than effective way to deal with it.

“When you go to therapy, the part of you that goes to therapy is your frontal lobes,” says Lynne Anderson, a therapist in private practice in Albany who is trained in sensorimotor psychotherapy. And yet, when patients are triggered emotionally, that’s the part of their brains that they have the least access to.

Anderson knows first-hand how trauma can affect the body. In 1976, her father’s car skidded off the road during a snowstorm. When she and her sister tried to rescue him, they were almost killed by an oncoming semi-truck.

During a session with a sensorimotor psychotherapist, the treating therapist pointed out that Anderson told the story expressly with her upper body, using animated gestures and voice, while her lower body remained rigidly still. “My legs were still frozen in the car,” Anderson says. “My mind had gone to therapy, but my legs had stayed frozen in the car.” It was only by paying attention to these physical cues that Anderson was able to finally achieve catharsis.

Sensorimotor psychotherapy employs tracking similar to somatic experiencing, but also uses a series of physical exercises designed to elicit responses from patients, with the goal of bringing about an “act of triumph,” when the body is finally able to do what it never got to do during the trauma, says Anderson. For example, a patient of Anderson’s, who was also involved in a traumatic car accident, was able to find that critical release when she stomped her foot against the floor, in effect pressing that brake pedal she hadn’t hit during the accident. Other patients are finally able to hit their attackers back or scream out.

Sensorimotor psychotherapy is also used to treat attachment injuries brought about by childhood abuse or neglect. “No one survives childhood without some kind of wounding, and it ranges in severity,” says Alice Maltbie, a therapist in private practice in Albany trained in sensorimotor psychotherapy. Some people suffer from anxiety or depression, while others have more profound injuries, resulting in dissociative identity disorders.

To address developmental issues, Maltbie begins by introducing patients to mindfulness techniques, teaching them to tune into their senses as a way to ground themselves. Then, Maltbie asks them about the problem, asking patients to maintain a careful awareness of what’s taking place in their body when they talk about this, and then, track those sensations to other experiences.

“I’m looking for a sense of what happened to that child,” says Maltbie. “What is connected to the belief that they have about themselves or the world outside and then how do they integrate that it into the present day.”

As the patient moves through therapy, they can experience marked, often physical changes. Clients report less anxiety, more confidence. “You can actually see it in how they look. When they’ve learned to manage their life, people actually look much different,” says Maltbie. “It’s really amazing to see the effects.”

“Bodies hold onto trauma, and trauma really gets stored there until we are able to soothe the body and release it.” — Yvonne Bregman